World through a lens: Totok has a shower at the Galuh foundation for the mentally ill in Jakarta

A mental patient named Totok reacts as he is given a shower at the Galuh foundation house in East Bekasi, outskirt of Jakarta. Photograph: Beawiharta Beawiharta / Reuter/Reuters

I knew about the Galuh foundation, but this was the first time I'd been inside. I had read in the local paper, here in Jakarta, about the marriage between one of the patients, who had been undergoing treatment for mental illness for five years, and one of the foundation staff, and wanted to see if I could go in and take some photographs.

The foundation was set up in 1982 by Gendu Mulatip, now 92, who wanted to find a way – with his own money at the beginning, augmented now by donations – to help mental patients who had been abandoned. He walked the streets, picking up one patient at a time and giving them shelter in the compound, treating them with prayers and traditional potions. The food is vegetarian.

It's pretty basic: it doesn't look much like what you might expect of a mental health facility in Indonesia, let alone in the west. Patients are still mostly kept in chains for the first two years, when they are most likely to run away or, worse, attack someone. But then, particularly if it's known someone on the outside can take care of them, the chains come off: the compound itself is not locked. And since its inception, Galuh has taken in and helped 285 patients.

This is Totok, who was being given his Friday shower. Totok, who has been here for three years, has a reputation as one of the wilder inmates, but seemed happy enough, friendly enough, particularly when the senior nurse, Suharyono, offered him a cigarette and told him it was also his turn for a haircut. "You will be a handsome man today. We will make into you a handsome man."

For all the roughness, I have nothing but admiration for what they're trying to do, and have now asked a friend for a donation. We could build a badminton court for them. Maybe install a simple sound system to let them sing together.